[ QUOTE ]
selling them a few more F16s won't change anything
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It won't change much in the balance of terror between Pakistan and India, but poor countries don't spend a billion dollars on fighters for no reason. One would think that it would at least further Pakistan's ability to wage war, including against its own population.
It also affects U.S. foreign policy by sending a signal to actual and potential "allies" about the sort of regime the U.S. hopes to foster and sustain in the Middle East and Central Asia. Specifically,
1. It rewards Pakistan for buying uranium hexaflouride (which can be enriched into weapons-grade uranium) from North Korea.
2. It rewards Pakistan for selling the same uranium hexaflouride to the formerly State Dept.-designated terrorist state of Libya.
3. It rewards Pakistan for pardoning Abdel Qadeer Khan, the top Pakistani nuclear scientist who ran network that sold nuclear weapons technology to Libya.
4. It rewards Pakistan for retaining laws that allow honor killers of women to go unpunished (1200 women killed last year).
5. It rewards Pakistan for
ongoing human rights violations ever since Musharrif assumed power, such as torturing and murdering farmers who refused to cede their land rights to the army, widespread arbitrary arrest and detention, harrassment and intimidation of the press, and a general lack of due process and democratic norms.
In short, it proves that rhetoric about supporting democracy or human rights continues to eclipsed by more hard-nosed concerns about developing symbiotic relations with geopolitically important states, regardless of whether those regimes give short shrift to the interests of their populations, Americans or the world at large. As Rice recently told Pakistani TV, the U.S. "will remain committed to this relationship for the long term" and be a friend of Pakistan "for life."
I'm not sure that the F-16's wouldn't be such a good platform. Rep. Sam Johnson (R. Tex) recently told a gathering that "I can fly and F-15, put two nukes on [Syria], and I'll make one pass. We won't have to worry about Syria anymore." Although he later conceded that he was just joking about exterminating all the Syrians. (From this month's American Prospect).